A cist is a small stone-lined grave, typically formed from upright slabs with a capstone lid, used during the Bronze Age to inter the dead, often in a crouched position and sometimes accompanied by a pottery vessel known as a food vessel or a decorated beaker. They are found across Ireland in their hundreds, yet each one represents an individual act of burial, a deliberate choice of place and form made by a community perhaps four thousand years ago. That this particular example carries a place name rather than a personal one is entirely typical; most cists have lost any association with the person they once held.

Beyond its classification and location in Mayo, the specific history of this cist, when it was discovered, what it contained, whether it was excavated formally or encountered by chance, remains unavailable in any accessible public record at this time. Richmond as a townland name suggests post-medieval plantation-era naming conventions, which adds a faint layer of historical irony to the fact that the most ancient thing there may be the least documented. Until further information is published, the burial remains one of many prehistoric monuments catalogued by designation but not yet fully described in any open source.